How bad is it?
Where to start?
Car journalists used to at least like cars. Most knew how to drive them, too. The typical car journalist was once also primarily an enthusiasts who kept them and worked on them and even raced them. When you brought up the history of cars with them, you could have an intelligent conversation because they knew what you were talking about. If you wanted to be one of the fraternity – and it was once exactly that – and did not know what splash oiling was or who Kettering was or what a carburetor does the brethren looked at you funny.
The style desk is over thataway.
It was a kind of tacit requirement or – perhaps better stated – an expected attitude, at the least, that kept away the types who disliked cars and driving, the same way you tend not to find people who don’t like guns and shooting them working at gun stores. A self-sort, you see.
Well, what changed? The ownership. The media outlets that publish car journalism were bought by interests that are interested in the disparagement of cars and driving – although this is usually not said out loud.
It need not be. It is readily achieved by not hiring people who do like cars and driving and hiring those who do not like either – and both. Herewith an example to make the point. The web site Jalopnik – which styles itself as being a car site – is a site devoted chiefly to disparaging cars and those who like them, in ways both subtle and overt but always in the dame direction.
It published an article the other day about the cratering demand for battery powered devices, which sounds at first read like it might have a pro-car/pro-driving take on that topic. Something maybe about the devices being pushed rather than people persuaded.
Then you read the punchline:
“EVs tend to be expensive, and everyone’s mired in economic uncertainty right now — buyers may see electrification as a luxury they can’t afford, or they may simply be fed up with the state of America’s charging infrastructure. Regardless of the reasoning, though, one thing is clear: Placing the continued habitability of our planet in the invisible hand of the market hasn’t gone well.“
Italics added.
No one who likes cars and driving would ever have written those lines and when I began my professional life as a car journalist back in the ’90s, anyone who wrote such malicious crap would have been immediately sussed out as an enemy of everything that cars and driving are about.
The “continued habitability of our planet”? This is girlish, hysterical drivel. Condescending and supercilious. It reeks of hall monitor we-know-best-ism, which is a characteristic of people who don’t know much – but also of people who think they are best; i.e., that they are righteously in-the-know and (of course) are going to tell you so, you dirty little car-driving “denier.”
“Our planet.” The lecturing makes one’s teeth ache. In fact it is the planet and no one owns it – although there are people who very much want to control it. They are the people who speak in terms of “our” things. By which they really mean their things or at least, the things they think they and other Right People such as themselves ought to control because they know best and we’re too stupid and irresponsible to know better. “Our planet” is the sort of thing shrivel-dick politicians such as Al Gore used to say. Now it is said by (sic) car journalists.
“The invisible hand of the market hasn’t gone well.” Note again the tone of lecturing a mildly stupid 6th grader who just doesn’t get it. Poor little Billy! He believes in the “invisible hand of the market” rather than the very real fist of the government. The hardly veiled contempt for people sorting out their own best interests is on display here. It is disparaged as being responsible for the cratering of EV sales. The dummies just don’t know what’s good for them. Are too selfish to put “our planet” first.
Interestingly, the man who wrote this is named Amber (formerly Steve) Dasilva and he – not “she” – would in a better time never have been hired to write about cars or anything else because mentally ill people were generally not hired to write about anything, other than perhaps their own journals in the nuthouse.
Steve-now-Amber lives in New York City, perhaps the most car-unfriendly place in the United States. Put another way, if he liked cars and driving them he would not be living in New York City. People who like cars and driving them flee places such as New York City.
It is no wonder interest in cars and driving is waning. When I was a kid, I was like most kids in that I wanted freedom long before I could get my hands on a car. I devoured car mags because what was in those pages was about freedom as much as it was about cars and driving them. Brock Yates, Pat Bedard and Csaba Csere got to me before H.L. Mencken, Leonard Reed and Lysander Spooner. But each led to the other. Cars and driving are integral to freedom; you cannot have the one without the other because not being able to move about freely, anywhere and on your own schedule means you aren’t free. James Brown captured this in his anthem, Living in America – which was the theme song for Rocky IV, in which Rocky defeats the seemingly invincible Soviet boxer, Ivan Drago.
That was in 1985 – and we’re not living in America anymore.
. . .
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I used to read a lot of car magazines…not anymore…now they are full of articles on the new surveillance equipment and self driving tech infested new cars….very expensive, over weight, 5000 lb, no fun, abortions.
Great discussion on cars here….for hardcore car enthusiasts….
https://www.youtube.com/@ChrisHarrisonCars
An independent car journalist on you tube….great content
https://www.youtube.com/@Number27/videos
Another independent car journalist on you tube….great content
https://www.youtube.com/@JayEmmOnCars/videos
Great content from Italy…Davide Cironi…
https://www.youtube.com/@davidecironi
Great content from the Stig….
https://www.youtube.com/@BenCollinsDrives/videos
The only things I read on car sites these days are your site, almost daily, just to see what rant you have that day (wink, wink) and the classic car of the day on Car and Driver. I’ll happily read an article from the 70’s about the AMC Javelin over the drivel today.
All work and no play make Amber/Steve a dull it.
Freedom to move is freedom, I could leave Nova Scotia this very moment and drive to your home in Virginia, I have all my papers in order, if you look into the crystal ball this will not continue.
Burning cargo ship containing 3000 vehicles (800 of them electric) is abandoned off Alaska:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/burning-cargo-ship-carrying-3000-vehicles-abandoned-off-alaska/ar-AA1G4FdT
I bought my first car magazine when I was 11 years old: Motor Trend March 1967. A teal Firebird on the cover and a comparison test of the Impala, Galaxie and Fury III inside.
MT was my holy grail growing up and long into adulthood. Until one day, Auto Week Magazine called them out for the frauds that they were with an expose of their habit of selling the Car Of The Year Award to the highest bidder, the one who promised to buy the most ad pages, provide the most perks and test vehicles and kissed their flat asses the hardest.
That’s when I stopped. The last sub I had was Hemmings Classic Car and it had deteriorated to the point the “writers” would tie themselves into knots describing what a 52 Rambler Country Club was: a two door hardtop. No… a “pillarless” hardtop [redundant], no “post”, not understanding that a hardtop is a two door, four door or station wagon without a “B” pillar [regardless of what Ford called the Mustang II in the ’70s]. It is an outlier. The exception. So no reason to describe things as “two door posts” or “pillarless”.
Not like the definition has been in place for almost 80 years.
They replaced all the good stuff from Special Interest Autos with color pictures and less and less editorial content. I subbed to that for their first 20 years and finally gave up. I swa where this was going.
But this era is not the only one that had hacks writing for car magazines. I remember in the late 60s Motor Trend hiring Julian G Schmidt, some alt press writer scribbling in a feverish hashish 60s haze about cars…..sort of. His hippy dippy prose was just obnoxious as he was writing to impress his friends not inform MT’s readers.
Even at 12 I thought he was a pretentious jackass.
Later, in the throes of dying, Road Test Magazine in the early 80s published some slack jaw who wouldn’t even use his real name but used the alias of “Maxwell Chalmers”…. ha ha ha hack. I get it.
This tranny thing is brand new, though.
I think the real writers are moving to social media and here is an example of a story no one is discussing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guAxFDafF1o
GM’s sell out to China. I’ve been saying it for years, short term gains over long term profitability, crisis to crisis planning only. Explains a lot about GM [gm] shrinking itself to world domination…….
The script for this must have taken a lot of research and the timeline goes back 25 years or more. This is truly investigative journalism.
And I had an almost physical reaction though I couldn’t despise GM enough after their execs gave themselves big fat bonuses after one quarter of profitability right out of BK while still owing billions to the US taxpayer. Sickening. It took nearly 60 years but the Big Detroit BK Three [Ford will be there soon] finally alienated me.
I’d buy a Dodge Caliber with a busted CVT before I bought anything from Stellantis and I refuse to buy 3 cyl turboed timing belt in oil POS GM joined with China’s SAIC to design. Ticking time bomb. Ask Ford.
After giving up on MT I tried Automobile and found it to be a pretentious rag, with it’s writers also writing for other car scribes and not the readers. I have no patience for phonies.
I had to catch up with Car & Driver as I only read them occasionally. But one of my prize finds is a hard bound edition of an entire year of CD, 1975, all 12 issues.
I had a sub to them in the 90s and then they started losing the plot as well. The later issues….all ads with a squib of an article sandwiched in. Waste of time and money.
TTAC isn’t what it was either. Maybe they should do more DEI hiring.
If you want to have an antidote to that car hating tranny, here are some real car journalists reviewing the new Corvette ZR1 which has an automatic tranny. There are still good ones out there, they’re just not writing for Jalopnik, which no car guy ever reads.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StWSpZHF998
I just posted I am finding more genuine, informed hands on car people showing up on You Tube than there has been on car web sites, OppositeLock.
On the internet I check in here and Bob Is The Oil Guy, AllPar once in awhile and that’s about it.
Bostwick9, please check out the website 540 RAT instead of BITOG. You’ll never look back. 🙂
These new “automotive journalists” are the same people that want everyone living in “polycules” (yes, that is, comically, a real thing) in 15-minute cities, eating bugs, worshipping the likes of Obama.
Steve-Amber is an example how all media has moved and now kowtows to exclusively to the left. Back in the day, sports writers and sports TV commentators were dedicated to the sport they were covering and for the most part left out politics. However, if you asked me, most sports commentator back in the day (with the exception of Howard Cosell) my guess leaned right. Today it’s Keith Oberman. Good by Bob Beattie, Dandy Don Meredith, Frank Gifford, John Madden and Pat Summerall
>Brock Yates, Pat Bedard and Csaba Csere
And don’t forget David E. Davis Jr. (RIP).
I loved his “Automobile” magazine through the 1990s and early 2000s.
This is why I only read you and S3mag.com, only two sites afaik that are aligned with legit car enthusiasts while covering different aspects of enthusiasm (reviews and tuning)
Ill say it until Im blue in the face, you and them need to do an interview together, feel it’d be dynamite!
Those propaganda “journalists” won’t be in business long.
You still have to have readers for advertising to pay to support.
I don’t even read jalop anymore.
The sad part is that Jalopnic could be funded by NGO money to help craft a narrative. In that case, no advertising money is necessary.
We live in a fake world.
The state of Car Journalism- Eric, you’re about the only one left
Second that, the rest are shills for the establishment.
Have people finally woke (not the “woke” pushed by liberal billionaires) up to the fact that the whole Climate change thing is BS as well as a GINORMOUS grift pushed by technocracy and liberal billionaires? The claim that Jalopnik made regarding why more people aren’t buying EVs sounds like claims pharma funded corporate media would make regarding why more people AREN’T getting COVID booster jab #50.
I certainly hope so, by now! It’s been obvious for years that it’s a hoax and a grift.
I hope so as well dood, though the billionaires, sociopaths, and elite organizations pushing this climate change BS have sure been successful the past few decades propagandizing people into believing the lies around “man made climate change”. Those screeching the loudest about CLIMATE CHANGE have also exposed themselves as the biggest phonies. Examples include John Kerry, Jeff Bezos, Al Gore, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, etc.
There are also states in the country decreeing that by 203X, the ONLY new vehicles that can be sold in those states are EVs, and if people say “NO!” to getting an EV, what are the odds that the governors of those states and/ or unelected bureaucrats will try to pull a Joe Biden and tell people “If you wish to drive an automobile, you MUST get an electric vehicle!” (that most people can’t even afford)?
When I was a kid, my neighbor was a kind, elderly widow whose grandson would visit every summer from California. His father was a car nut, having owned a Shelby Cobra in his misspent youth and had spent his life turning wrenches on cars. He got me into all things automotive since my father hated cars (they’re just for getting from point A to point B, he’d say).
I got my first subscription to Car and Driver when I was 11 or 12 and I’d be excited each month to go out to the mailbox to read Brock Yates, Pat Bedard, Csaba Csere, John Philips and others, especially PJ O’Rourke. I learned about heel and toe shifting, the finer points of a driving line and more importantly, it engendered a love in me for cars that I’d always had for airplanes.
Now, that once-wonderful buff book and others are toxic waste dumps filled with spoiled little soyboy betacucks who hate cars and loathe with the intensity of a thousand suns the people who enjoy them. Instead, you get lectures about the “climate” and they whine if the infotainment system is “old” whatever that means. Then maybe they’ll talk about how a car or more likely, an SUV, drives.
It’s depressing. I don’t want lectures about “the climate” and how I need to be forced to buy an EV that goes half as far and weighs and costs twice as much as a gasoline or diesel powered car. The comment sections there, especially on The Drive, are awful, filled with EV-loving soulless soyboys who will go berserk if you stray off the “consensus” or criticize electric cars. I wonder how many of them are bots? There can’t be that many people who love fire-prone EVs that make you wait for them to charge for an ungodly amount of time.
Especially on C&D, many of my anti-EV comments mysteriously vanished. Wonder why? I don’t comment there since I noticed some of them would vanish without a word.
I will occasionally drop in on C&D’s site, not to read any of the modern reviews, but to see their archival stuff. Not only was the photography amazing, the writing was some of the best in any genre.
I agree with the other commenters that the crossover-dominated automotive universe we now inhabit sucks and isn’t inspiring the kind of reviews C&D did in its glory days. But there’s no excuse for having car-hating, mentally-ill people from NEW YORK CITY (cue the old Pace picante sauce commercial) bleating about the “climate crisis.”
Only use for their modern stuff are the instrument tests showing the speed, and even then, that’s only but so useful
When R&T went from really detailed comparos to just being an alternative C&D I saw the writing on the walls
If every battery powered transportation device is just a Johnny Cab, what is there to write about? Johnny’s “personality?”
I cut that crap rag out of my news feed a long time ago. Commie drivel, clearly bought and paid for by the leftist community organizers. The other one that annoyed the hell out of me is Frank Markus. A smart guy, but he’s completely bought into climate hysteria, in which case he’s simultaneously too stupid to realize that caring about the environment and buying into climate wealth redistribution are two separate things. He singlehandedly was the reason why I canceled my print Motor Trend subscription after many years. (Johnny Leiberman? Can’t remember his name exactly… He was funny and good)
The state of ALL “journalism” sucks. I grew up in the pre-internet days of John Chancellor and David Brinkley. Those guys were pros. I used to listen to NPR. Now it’s insufferable. You could get genuinely good scientific information from magazines like Popular Mechanics and National Geographic.
Now it’s ALL “girlish, hysterical drivel” about hokum like “climate change.” Not to mention the lack of proofreading, open, condescending bias, and generally bad writing altogether. The feminization of the media has been utterly ruinous to journalism.
The latest trend I see is girl sportscasters, LOL. As if some 23-year old girl with a B.A. in “communications” making $15 an hour at the local television station knows fuck-all about being an offensive lineman…
If Chancelor and Brinkley were alive today, they would be further raging leftists, giving these young punks a wink and a nod, or they wouldn’t be. These people were hardcore commies like Cronkite and Rather, IMO.
Agree 100%. Thank you,
Cronkite gets my craw along with the other “leftist” journalists of the day.
Cronkite was a scumbag poor excuse for a “journalist” and was, in actuality, just a “newsreader”, nothing more.
Bestowing an award bearing Cronkite’s name on anyone should be looked upon as shameful and not worthy of recognition.
During the news coverage on the Kennedy assassination in 1963, I observed the so-called “newscasters” (including Cronkite) smirking and joking among themselves, figuring out for myself that “the fix was in” and they knew more about the REAL situation than they were letting on…
Cronkite’s declaration that the Vietnam war was “lost” despite the massive slaughter of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong communists was the pinnacle of his lies in his illustrious career.
Cronkite succeeded in prolonging the Vietnam war for years. The North Vietnamese admitted that the support that they received from Cronkite and the communist-run American mainstream media gave them “new resolve” to fight on. In fact, they were ready to settle in 1968 until the American media “turned” on the American military, blaming the U S military for the prosecution of the war.
The Vietnam situation was an INVASION by the communist North, and was not a “civil-war” which is the most common explanation, even today.
There are both cultural and language differences between the North and the South. The South had no desire to be “ruled” by the communist North. All one has to do is look at how many people “voted with their feet” and moved south after the partition in 1954. Observe the “boat people” who risked life and limb to escape that “communist paradise” after the fall of Saigon in 1975.
It is interesting to note, that the so-called “anti-war protesters” were silent when the boat people were escaping their fate. The “anti-war” protesters were only concerned about one thing–saving their own skins from the draft. When the draft disappeared, so did the anti-war protesters.
The United States did have a valid fear of communism taking over that whole part of Southeast Asia. It was feared that Cambodia and Thailand would be the next “dominoes” to fall to communism.
When the communists took over, they could not enforce the same rigid communist controls and goals on the South as they had on the North.
Yes, there were many failures and setbacks, with the South Vietnamese government being corrupt (which government (even the USA) isn’t corrupt?), but the efforts of Americans to forestall a communist takeover were honorable.
Fast forward to today’s situation in Gaza and the West Bank. Every American news outlet will not report on the total genocide going on in Gaza and the West Bank because they are owned, lock stock and barrel by JEW$.
If you want real news RT (Russia Today), Al Jazeera, Middle East Memo and other worthy news organizations. Notice that I left out BBC and Deutsch Well, both of who are in the tank for genocide…BBC is starting to “crack” on Gaza genocide coverage.
If there are indeed “war crimes trials” concerning the middle east, the news organizations should be in the dock for promoting genocide as well.
We were just talking about the obvious reason for proliferation of good looking sideline reporters, I think started by Erin Andrews. They don’t really add much substance to the program. That’s OK, FOX knew their audience and how to get ratings.
I don’t have a problem with women sportscasters, you don’t have to be a retired lineman to understand the game. Some of the best play-by-play announcers never got past high school ball. That’s the color guy’s job, who I do agree needs to be a retired from the sport they’re calling.
I noticed that Hemming’s is down to just one magazine and while it’s OK, I do miss their Muscle Machines magazine. I’m curious if a gun journalist would keep their job if all they did was complain that there was too much recoil and noise with those things and you would be better off to take up knitting instead. 🙂 Of course shooting an M-38 with heavy ball and a t shirt may leave bruises but it’s fun. 🙂
Someone should ask the creature known as Amber what’s worse: phase separation of ethanol fuel or immolation due to thermal runaway in your EV’s battery pack.
Great stuff, Eric. I know you can’t list all the great automotive journalists but, I wouldn’t want to leave our Henry N. Manney III and Peter Egan.
Those were the days.
Jalopnik? Geldings all.
Yes. “Amber” (formerly Steve) is literally a gelding.
Oh, I almost forgot because it’s staring me right in the face, Eric Peters.
I was in the hobby shop on Saturday mornings buying model airplane glue, Testors paint, a model car kit, take it home and assemble the parts. At nine yo, you did it because it was fun and you had a model car you put together yourself. At 12 yo, I was riding a moped in the neighborhood until a cop told me to walk it home.
You read fiction books about cars, you want one to drive, you’re old enough to handle the steering and brakes, then you start driving around town, then to the country, then to another state sometimes.
You have a car, you get to drive it, it breaks down from time to time, the fuel pump goes shot, you change it out. Then the water pump, the radiator leaks, you have a flat tire. Doesn’t stop, really. Gotta keep moving.
Anymore, you drive for 700 miles on a road trip, you have to rest for two days when you get back home.
Then you pine for the old days to return, misspent youth and run around making sure it was, that was the fun of it.
Waxing nostalgic, been a long time now.
The comment section of that Jalopnik article is just as insufferable as the article itself, dominated as it is by pro-EV zealots. In a way, that makes sense, because those who have a genuine interest in cars probably don’t read Jalopnik in the first place, or at least not anymore, so what we’re left with are those who hate cars and love dEVices.
“If you’re not growing, you’re dying.” – some Wall Street guy, somewhere.
The automotive press is acting just like every other media outlet: They’re assuming the core audience isn’t going anywhere so they can “reach out to non-traditional readers,” IE soy-boys and transvestites. Because a constant revenue stream that doesn’t change much isn’t going to move the stock needle, at least not enough when your entire executive team’s compensation plan is based share price. So they’re desperate to increase eyeballs in a market flooded with “independent journalists” who give it away for free in forums, low-overhead bloggers, YouTubers, traditional media trying to branch out, etc. All the while trying to outdo each other at cocktail (edibles?) parties over who’s the most virtuous.
Besides, maybe they’re trying to get a rise out of us. We’re talking about them. Any press is good press, because we’re talking about them. All wrong of course, but still…
“Say anything you like about me, but spell my name right.” – P. T. Barnum
‘Poor little Billy! He believes in the “invisible hand of the market”’ — eric
Billy believes in a — wait for it — “conspiracy theory,’ in other words. According to our betters in the supercilious Lügenpresse, that is.
This morning brings another astounding instance of media tendentiousness, from habitual offender the New York Slimes. Here it “reports” on Trump’s executive order to investigate who was operating the autopen under “Biden”:
‘President Trump ordered to investigate Biden and his staff in Mr. Trump’s latest attempt to stoke outlandish conspiracy theories about his predecessor, following a pattern of suggestions that Mr. Biden was a mentally incapacitated puppet of his aides.
‘The ordered inquiry into a conspiracy theory about the former president was a startling escalation.
‘A central claim of the conspiracy theory is that Mr. Biden’s use of the autopen can legally invalidate those documents.’ — NYT
https://archive.ph/ymD5o#selection-867.0-871.1
When the Lügenpresse repeats “conspiracy theory” three times, you know the hive mind is riled and buzzing.
As the Slimes itself reported, special counsel Robert Hur stated in writing, after a five-hour deposition of “Biden,” that “Biden would likely present himself to a jury … as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Moreover, House Speaker Mike Johnson, in a long-sought personal meeting, brought up an executive order which “Biden” was unaware of.
These are facts. Whereas “conspiracy theory” smears are rank propaganda.
“Well, what changed? The ownership.” This subject merits an essay of its own, if not a book. ‘Who? Who? Who?’ as the owl screeches. We’re not supposed to notice.
Not many interesting autos left for legit auto enthusiasts/journalists to write about anymore, with the current market dominated by homogeneous crossovers, 3 ton pickups, and 5 ton flammable devices.
When 90% of the new car market is soul crushing, emotionless, 4 wheeled transport pods, will it even matter? It’s the future these current soyboy “journalists” already embrace.
In 10 years, ‘Car and Driver’ will be as exciting as reading an issue of ‘Washer and Dryer.’
Correct. So-called ‘cars’ have become white goods [large appliances] with a cell phone interface and four wheels [in place of casters] to facilitate moving them around. That they also transport people is almost incidental.
Steve-now-Amber has a great future with Refrigeration World News, in its titanic struggle to save the atmosphere from greenhouse gases (GHGs).
‘Nice meat locker you got here. Be a shame if the door was to shut and you couldn’t get out.’
Hi Flip. I don’t know about ‘Washer and Dryer” but the “articles” in Spick and Span magazine are surely worth looking at even today.
Amazingly, a magazine called “Hot Rod” is still being published.
A few “helpful” article from the website:
The Best Tire Inflators for 2025
How To Protect Your Car and Garage From a Flood
Best Suspension Lift Kits for Jeep Wranglers:
5 of the Best Pop-Up Truck Bed Campers:
and finally,
Pura Delivers Smart Scent Technology to Every Drive
Not your Daddy’s Hot Rod Magazine.
When they were relevant they could write a minimally engaging article on the Chevette. When you’re genuinely into cars you can always find something to say about them, good or bad, that will get another car guy to read it.
There’s interesting things happening still, just not in the dinosaur media outlets. Recently watched a couple of guys who swapped a Hellcat engine into a 350Z chassis. If you’ve done engine swaps you could sympathize with their gotchas shoehorning it and feel their pain when stuff predictably broke.
Or the everyday people who build and race Lemons cars. They even make EV classes interesting, regular gearheads who figure out how to do 3 minute battery swaps and fast charging on beer budgets.
Amen, Harry –
I really ought to put a small block in my ’02 Nissan…
I’ve really given that some thought in my old Land Cruiser. Swapping in small block into cars is I think a cheat. Yeah, it’s been done for decades as a way to fix the original lack of power or inability to get repair parts. But it feels kind of like ripping the soul out of a car that isn’t a Chevy. Not that some of them aren’t interesting. It’s basically what Shelby did except a big ass Ford V8 into tiny Euro sports cars, making a whole new category in the process. I’ve seen some old Nissan trucks made into a real sleepers using a crate LS and there’s plenty of kits and bits to help do it…
Hi Harry –
Yup! The other thing I have given serious thought to is a GM 4.3 V6 swap. That would fit easily (well, mostly easily) in the Nissan and these V6s easily make close to 200 hp without doing much to them. That plus the torque would make a runner (and a tower) out of my truck!
Ugh. Do the V8, the 4.3 swap is just as much work, gives about the same mpg, and performance and dress up parts are more expensive.
Agree on the GM 4.3. The power of a 4 cylinder…with the fuel economy of an 8.
A Vortec 4800 would get amazing mileage in a 2WD truck that small – and even at stock 270HP would rip.
Friend of mine easily would achieve over 20mpg on the highway with his 4.8/auto/RC/LB/4WD ’00 Silverado.
>Brock Yates, Pat Bedard and Csaba Csere
Ah, the Holy Trinity. 🙂
I got to meet Csaba Csere at at the last public National Motorists Association membership get together in 1996. He was the real deal. He liked freedom for sure. Unlike William Jeanes, who was the previous Car and Driver editor. He was kind of one of those aloof poseur types, they type that pointed to where we are at today. People like him were no real help to the cause of motoring freedom as they were sideline observers, without ideological cores, rather than participants, like Eric.. and Csaba. I wonder what he is up to these days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Csaba_Csere
I saw that. That information is at least 10 years old.